Join our Hold On To Your Butt committee on Sunday, October 26 from 8:30am-12:30pm, as they launch an ambitious Ashcan Revitalization Project to reduce cigarette butt litter in Ocean Beach!

Teams of volunteers will go out in Ocean Beach’s Voltaire and Newport business areas to combat cigarette butt litter by installing thirty new ashcans, refurbishing fifty existing ashcans with new stickers, and cleaning up cigarette butts along the way.

A press conference will be held at Te Mana Café (4956 Voltaire St) starting at 9am where we will recognize local organizations and businesses, as well as government officials, who have supported our ashcan program.

Volunteers will meet at 8:30am at Te Mana Café to check-in and gear-up for their assignments. There will also be an after-party for all volunteers at the same location immediately following the event. Make sure to sign-up for this volunteer opportunity by clicking here.

“Cigarette butts and other tobacco product waste are the items that are most commonly picked up during urban and beach cleanups worldwide,” according to San Diego State University Public Health Professor Thomas Novotny and researcher Elli Slaughter in a recent article published in Current Environmental Health Reports, a scientific journal. “An estimated 4.5 trillion of the annual 6 trillion cigarettes sold worldwide do not end up in a dustbin or ashtray, but are simply flicked away along a roadside or on a pavement.”

This type of litter is not just found on streets and in urban settings; the number of cigarette butts found on beaches and nearby areas is overwhelming, accounting for approximately 40% of the items collected during Surfrider Foundation’s monthly public beach cleanups. Cigarette waste discarded miles inland compounds the problem as it can end up in drains that flow to streams, rivers, bays, lagoons and ultimately the ocean.